A defibrillator is a medical device that is capable of performing one or more therapeutic functions on a subject. For example, a defibrillator can provide therapy to the subject's heart by delivering defibrillation pulses to normalize an irregular heart rhythm and pacing pulses to regulate the heart's rate.
In addition, certain defibrillators are also capable of performing one or more monitoring or sensing functions to assist the cardiac therapy. These multi-function defibrillators can measure certain vital signs of the subject and provide an indication of the measurements. For example, these defibrillators may be able to monitor the percentage of the subject's hemoglobin that is saturated with oxygen (SpO2 monitoring), the levels of carbon dioxide expired by the subject (“end tidal CO2” (EtCO2) monitoring), the subject's blood pressure (via non-invasive blood pressure (NIBP) or invasive blood pressure (IBP) monitoring), the electrical voltage in the subject's heart (in the form of an electrocardiogram (ECG)), multiple-lead ECG, and/or the subject's temperature. The defibrillators may also include cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) assistance via an accelerometer or other technology, providing an indication of the depth and rate at which compressions should be applied.
A defibrillator that is capable of providing a therapeutic function and a monitoring function may include a single housing and one or more cables that are connectable to the housing. The housing contains the circuitry and other components of the defibrillator. The cables provide the interface between the housing and the subject during use. There may be one cable associated with the one or more therapeutic functions and one cable for each of the monitoring functions. As a result, there may be more than eight cables that extend between the housing and the subject. Users of all of these functions, along with users of a subset of these functions often complain of the many individual cables that may need to be untangled to connect a patient to a defibrillator in an emergent situation. In this situation, the user is pressed for time and may need to connect the patient quickly to administer life-saving therapy.
In addition, when the defibrillator is on a crash cart or being held by the user, there are many cables that go between the defibrillator and the patient, causing potential entanglement as a patient is transported. This can impede the transport to a critical care area where the patient can receive a full array of treatment. As well, when a patient is transported up and down stairs or in tight quarters (as often occurs in the EMS environment), the user may want to quickly disconnect the patient from the defibrillator temporarily to avoid any potential entanglement. The customary manner of disconnection is to disconnect the cables at the defibrillator end. With current devices,. this may require disconnection of a multitude of cables. In a resuscitation event, when treating a patient in cardiac arrest, the cable providing the therapeutic electrical therapy (e.g., the defibrillation therapy) must not have its functionality compromised. Additionally, close proximity of high voltage leads to low voltage monitoring signals can often corrupt the sensitive low voltage signals. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,491,299, D363,989 and D366,528 describe a cable with multiple conductors in a flexible multi-parameter patient cable, but these references do not provide for a means of inclusion of conductors providing therapeutic electrical energy.